


night still there shining

by 8611



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Gen, Genderswap, Rule 63, Team Free Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-03-11
Packaged: 2018-01-15 08:42:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1298605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8611/pseuds/8611
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The car will always be the same, no matter what changes. It was John’s, now it’s Dean’s, and there are initials carved into a soul that shouldn’t exist but was made to be by two sisters with clever hands and bright grins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	night still there shining

**Author's Note:**

> Team Free Will + rule 63. 
> 
> Title's from Friends/Led Zeppelin, because I figured if I was going to do something as cliche as use a Zeppelin song for a Supernatural fic, I might as well just get it over with early on, haha.
> 
> A majorly huge thank you to [verity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity), who beta'd this despite not even, and I quote, "going here." <3

Cas notices the smaller details of the car the longer she spends in it -- the rattle from somewhere up front where the windshield meets the dash in a sharp point, the little green man wedged into the ashtray in the back, the _love_ that’s inked and stitched into every last inch of the car. Cas can feel Dean’s hands all over her, in her, and Sam’s presence is a solid weight that never quite leaves, even when Sam’s nowhere near the car. 

The car will always be the same, no matter what changes. It was John’s, now it’s Dean’s, and there are initials carved into a soul that shouldn’t exist but was made to be by two sisters with clever hands and bright grins. 

“Feet off the dash,” Dean says, and reaches out to punch Sam in her knee, hard. 

“Ow,” Sam snaps, a quick whine of a sound, and Cas looks at them as they turn to stare at each other at a stop light, eyes narrowed and profiles sharp. 

“You’ll scuff her up,” Dean says. 

“You kick your goddamn door open every time you open it. There’s a permanent bootprint in it,” Sam points out. 

They both know the bootprint is just as much of a part of the car now as they are. Dean rolls her eyes, huffs out a little noise and accelerates just a bit too fast away from the light. Cas watches the backs of their heads and pulls her wings around her, bringing that bit of soul that an inanimate object shouldn’t have closer to her skin, and settles in for the ride. 

\---

Mary and John Winchester still have two children. Dean is still the older one, the brat with a fast mouth and a faster smile. When Dean is 18 and Sam is 14 a guy at a road stop calls Dean _you little shit_ , and she smirks, owns it. 

Dean owns all of it -- the _little shit_ , the brat, mouthy, bitchy, sweetheart, baby. She’ll use them before other people can put them on her sometimes, call the boys at bars _sweetheart_ with whiskey on her tongue. She pulls the words out of their mouths before they can say them, more and more as she gets older, and it becomes less about owning it and more about weaponizing them. She calls the boys _honey_ and _baby_ and _doll_ before they can even think them about her. 

She’s 5’9” of long legs and freckled shoulders and too pretty, too wide eyes. She keeps her hair tied back and wears cut-offs and men’s shirts, the cuffs rolled up to her elbows, and fights with steel-toed boots and hands that have broken enough that it doesn’t hurt that badly anymore when she slams her fists into men’s faces. 

Sam is always the sweet one who stoops a little bit to make less of her height, still has a too-quick temper and dark dreams and the knowledge, somewhere at the back of her mind, that she’s _strange_. 

Dean does a lot of the fighting, when Sammy’s still too young. Early on, when John is still dumping them on relatives and friends because he thinks the road is no place for two little girls, Sam does a lot of hanging back while Dean gets in people’s faces, glaring and yelling and biting but never hitting. 

The hitting comes later, when, because John is reluctant to teach them, Dean starts picking it up. In another universe, Dean fights with compact movements, trained by a man trained on bar brawls and military discipline, fights like a boy who knows the streets under his feet but also knows the economy of moment you want to leverage against your opponent. 

Here, in this space, this time, Dean picks things up by herself at first. What comes out of it is a mish-mosh of hits and kicks collected from different disciplines that have one thing in common: they’re good for someone who might be tall, but doesn’t have broad shoulders and heavy muscle packed on to that frame. They’re light, glancing movements. It’s fast, and utterly unpredictable. Dean does not fight by a pattern that anyone can predict, and she knows to watch her back much, much better. It makes her deadly efficient. 

Sam gets some of that, but by this point John has figured out that the only place for _his_ girls is going to be the road, and so she gets more of the military discipline. Dean sneaks things in though -- not as much, Sam has a good three inches on her, tall and wide for a girl, and holds her own a little bit better. 

“Dad won’t teach you this,” Dean says, and stands behind Sam, kicking her feet wide, and shows her how to use the flat of her hand against the soft corners of the body. 

\---

Castiel is still Castiel. She chooses a female vessel because there are two available to her in the bloodline: Jenny and Claire. Mother and daughter. The girl is young, too young, and so Castiel comes to Jenny instead. 

Convincing a father to leave his daughter behind is easier than asking a mother to do the same. But Castiel has need for a vessel, and plans to see to fruition. 

(Later, Jenny will _order_ Castiel out of Claire, will raise herself up onto shaking feet and her eyes will burn and she will practically drag Castiel out of Claire before Castiel is even quite sure what is happening.)

The girls call her _she_ and _her_ and so she does as well, if only of ease for these two humans who can’t quite wrap their heads around the idea of a genderless celestial being. 

She rebuilds Dean’s body just the way it was, tan skin and freckles and bottle-green eyes and messy hair and colt legs, and when she pulls Dean out of Hell she leaves a hand-print on her shoulder, small palm and long fingers seared over the joint. 

The first time she sees Dean on earth, however, is in a barn with useless sigils splashed across the walls. 

Castiel wonders if Dean knows what she looks like to Cas, with the dirt of a thousand trips pressed into her feet and all the sun she keeps under her skin, and Cas marvels at how beautifully human she looks. 

\---

John has less of a hold on Dean. Less of a sway. She still snaps to attention, still says _yessir_ , but she sneaks around. Follows orders a little less closely. John Winchester is not infallible, and Dean knows that. 

“I don’t want you going around to that boy’s,” John tells her one night when she’s given up on high school finally and they’re all crashed at Bobby’s. 

“What boy?” Dean asks, putting her feet up on the table. Bobby would bitch if he were here, but he and Sam are in town, and so Dean’s safe to lounge around. 

“The one you spent the night with,” John growls, and Dean looks away, pursing her lips and tugging at her necklace. 

“There’s no boy,” Dean says. When she looks back at John he’s staring at her like he’s trying to pry her body apart to read it like the pages of a book, and so she tacks on a hastily added “ _sir._ ” 

“Don’t lie to me,” John says. 

“Did you forget I’m an adult?” Dean snaps, and slams her feet down so that she can lean on the table like John is, hands balled into fists. “Fuck off!”

“Don’t you talk to me like that -- Dean! _Deanna_!”

She’s already out the door. She’s not even particularly mad, she’s more exhausted. She’ll tell him one day, she knows she will, when she does get really angry and explodes at him, screaming that she’s not lying and he can mind his own goddamn business. 

She spends the next night at Laura’s too, and lets Laura mark up her neck so that John can see it when she turns her back to him. 

\---

That’s always going to be the same: Dean is always going to love people. Love the lines of their bodies, love tracing those lines with fingers and nails and lips and teeth, love falling into bed with someone just to indulge in the warmth of another human being for an hour or two. She doesn’t care who they are (as long as they’re not trying to kill her), where they’ve been, or what’s down their pants, as long as they’re willing. 

Dean’s not one to worry about things like that. Laura is followed by Ryder who’s followed by Kat and Billy. They’re all human, that’s all that really matters. 

“Did dad ever know that you’re bi?” Sam asks, three beers in and many years later. 

“Bi?” Dean squints at Sam, licking her lips and then staring down at her mostly empty beer. “I just like people, Sammy.”

“Pretty sure that’s bi,” Sam says. 

“Whatever,” Dean says, rolling her eyes. “You’re such a weirdo.” 

“Pot, kettle,” Sam says, and when she grins Dean matches it with one of her own. 

\---

People underestimate them. No matter what universe they’re in, people seem to catch onto the Winchesters too late, after there are already bodies on the floor. But here, there’s even more hang time, even more of a lag.

No one expects them to be what they are. They ignore them, or push them away, or defer them to other people. 

They get smirks and sneers and _ok, sure, ladies_ , a lot from law enforcement. Dean has come to hate anything with a uniform by default.

When they roll into a town outside of Kansas City and troop into the local coroner's office, she looks surprised to see two women. 

“What can I help you with?” Dr. Walsh asks, standing up to shake their hands after introductions are made. Dean likes her pretty much immediately, loves her when she sees that Walsh is wearing 4-inch pumps with perfectly pointed toes. 

Walsh turns out to be their monster of the week. Part of Dean is angry when she vanishes into thin air, the other part is happy, and that makes her feel uneasy. She should be pissed, monsters shouldn’t slip through her hands. It sits with her for a while, this respect for the coroner in the ‘fuck-off’ heels twisted up with the anger at losing prey. 

She gets over it. That’s a constant: she’ll always get over their current monster problem. It’s the other stuff that rides around with her, always will. 

\---

Cas shows up next to Dean, so that when Dean looks up there are two people in the bathroom mirror. Cas looks just as windblown as normal, some of her hair sticking up, and her headband is sitting slightly askew. 

“You look like you went a couple of rounds with a dryer cycle,” Dean says, and leans against the sink with one hip, crossing her arms. 

“I haven’t… why would I fight a dryer?” Cas asks, and Dean just sighs. Cas will never get her jokes. Dean is pretty sure that it’s a law of physics or something: like how gravity is always going to be a bitch, Cas is never going to understand anything that isn’t totally plain English. 

“Forget about it. What’s up?” Dean asks, and Cas flounders for a moment, which is new. Dean raises her eyebrows and gives Cas time to cast about. 

“I wanted to see you,” Cas says, and she sounds surprised by it. “You and Sam. I was feeling… lonely.” 

“Wow, first time for everything,” Dean says, and thumps Cas on the shoulder. “Well, Sam’s on a beer run, but when she gets back we can braid each other’s hair and gossip about boys.”

“Neither you nor Sam wear your hair in braids.”

“Oh my _god_ , Cas.” 

\---

People don’t expect them to hold their own in fights. Don’t expect them to be hustling pool. Don’t expect them to be able to take down a couple of werewolves, or demons, or vampires. 

There aren’t a lot of women hunters. Eventually, after the years and years of getting shit on by gravel-voiced men who think they can’t save their own asses they tend to settle down. Open a bar. Raise kids. 

Or, kid. And maybe Ellen is the only one who did the bar thing. She still always has open arms for the girls, when they come in looking a bit more murderous than usual, cussing out various people seven ways to Sunday and back around again. 

“Gordon,” Sam bitches one time. 

“Fucker at a bar,” Dean seeths another time. 

“Drink,” Jo always says, sending shots their way. 

Ellen never asks them if it’d be easier if they _didn’t_ do this, because she knows it wouldn’t be easier. She’s known a lot of hunters across the years, maybe more than most, and Sam and Dean are only two in a small handful who were raised in the life, and she _knows_. Knows that they put up with a lot of shit but it’s never occurred to them to stop because that’s not what’s in their blood. Sam and Dean never had a chance at leading normal lives, so they knuckle down and buckle under and keep going through all the bullshit slung their way by men with too much bravado and too little brains. 

She knows they can take care of themselves. Knows they’re probably the best damn hunters out there because they’ve had to be, because they have to watch more than their own backs. They’re hyper-aware in the way the men who come through the Roadhouse never have to be. 

When the apocalypse turns out to be a real thing, Ellen trusts Sam and Dean to kick it in the ass, because that’s what they always do.

\---

Sam never quite gets over Jess. She tries, and the years dull down the pain, like a pebble rolling down a riverbed, but there will still always be an ache there. Jess was something else, was an exception to all of Sam’s rules. Don’t get attached, don’t tell people what she did before school, don’t stay. 

She’d never looked at a girl before Jess. It had just never occurred to her. She’s known for a long, long time that Dean looks at _everyone_ , but with her it’s just guys. Except Jess. 

They don’t talk about her, for the most part. There’s one time though, when it’s still too fresh of a wound for Sam to properly deal with. They’re on a hunt, and Sam nearly almost accidently seduces a preacher’s daughter and when she tells Dean she expects Dean to laugh, but she doesn’t. She just looks up at Sam over her burger and tilts her head to the side. 

“Too bad you didn’t _actually_ seduce her,” Dean says finally, although it’s measured, even. Not teasing. “I haven’t even managed to do that, would have been one for the history books.” 

Dean scratches at her face, mom’s too-big wedding ring glinting where she wears it on her thumb, and Sam just stares at it. Dean catches her looking when she’s sucking ketchup off her hand, at the juncture of her first finger and thumb. 

“I know I’ve got a pretty face, but shit, Sammy, just ask,” Dean says, and there’s the tease, the poking and prodding. “Staring’s just rude.” 

“I’m not staring at you,” Sam mumbles, drags a finger through the condensation on her glass. “‘m staring at mom’s ring.”

Dean slows her movements at that, her razor-grin and bright eyes rounding out a bit. There’s something that might be softness her her face. She lets out a long breath, scrubs at her face, and puts her burger down. 

“You really liked her, didn’t you?” Dean asks, and Sam sits back into the beat-up booth cushions, kicking her legs out so that her sneaker catches one of Dean’s boots. She looks out the window, crossing her arms, and thinks about replying. About telling Dean about what it was like to look at Jess, like you were looking at the stars above you, lying in the grass on one of the summer nights where time moved a bit slower. About how she hadn’t liked her, she’d _loved_ her. 

Instead: “yeah.” 

\---

Cas likes to think that one day she’ll return Jenny to Claire and Amery, but it gets harder each day to keep up such a human charade as deception. Jenny has faded in her mind each time Cas has been remade, and what’s left of her are traces, little things. Her taste for barbequed ribs, her love of the color emerald, her blinding devotion to Claire. 

Cas checks in from time to time on Claire. She has grown up to be quite the young woman, brilliant and sharp, and she shines. She is, however, broken. She knows what it’s like to hold the weight of angelic power in her mind, she knows what it’s like to lose a mother. She knows what it’s like to grow up with a distant father. 

She reminds Cas too much of the Winchesters, most of the time, and something in her aches. She’s always angry at herself for weeks after she goes to see Claire. 

Stupid, so stupid. She should have asked Amery, even though she knows it probably would have killed him. A tie by marriage is not strong enough, is not a blood tie. 

After one night, when Claire lashes out at Amergy and Jenny is no more than a low frequency leftover at the back of Cas’ skull, Cas finds that, if she tries especially hard, she can get drunk. She goes to the Winchesters, because when she’s lonely or scared or unsure, that is what she does. She falls back on the family she made for herself out of bits and pieces of other broken families. 

Dean and Sam prop her up against the headboard of one of the beds in their dingy motel room and sit on either side of her, bracketing her body with their own. She wants to laugh, wants to know how these two human girls decided that they need to protect her, a being who is something much more than human.

But she knows. She knows that they are so human that their souls burn a little bit brighter, than these two bodies contain the stars and love and sorrow and everything that makes them _human_ and Cas loves them for it. 

She reaches out for them, taking their hands, and they both startle at it a little bit, but no one pulls away. Cas drinks in the warmth of the cosmos tucked into their cells and feels the wild anger start to leach from her own body.

\---

Dean is still mouthy, Sam is still hot and cold, and Cas is still perplexed and ferocious and broken and iron-willed. 

Dean wears her hair pulled back quick and messy, Sam wears scuffed up sneakers that Jess had bought her years and years ago in another life, and Cas’ perfectly blue headband is always slightly askew, like it doesn’t know how to properly sit on her head. 

Dean fights quick and ruthless and with precision that came later in life, after John finally started helping her and Sammy. Sam knows what it’s like to hold darkness in the palms of her hands, in her very soul. Cas knows how to betray her own family and then beg forgiveness. 

They’re still Cain and Abel, Michael and Lucifer. They still make deals at crossroads and bet on their own souls to save the other. One still has freckles and the other too-long hair and they still have those wide green eyes that might be the only thing they share besides their height. 

They’re all they’ve got for a long time. Longer, maybe, because it’s hard to depend on a father who tried to leave them behind until they got into fistfights and learned how to throw the first punch. When John found them again they had sharp eyes and angry mouths, further from his control. 

It’s Sam and Dean and the car and the open road and the hunt, and that’s always going to be theirs, until it’s Cas’ as well. 

They’re in a bar, FBI dragged out, and two men come up to their table and leer and say _come join us, girls_. Dean rounds them off with pretty smiles and biting words; she could do this in her sleep at this point. One of them reaches out for Cas’ hand and Sam and Dean freeze because they’re plenty used to this happening to them, but never to Cas. 

Cas has been riding around with the Winchesters for long enough, though. She digs her nails into the guy’s hand, looks up at him through her lashes, and smiles in a way that makes Dean remember the leviathans. 

“Fuck off,” she says, in that wrecked voice of hers, and Sam and Dean don’t stop laughing for a long, long time. 

\---

Sam tries to make relationships work from time to time. She knows Dean tries to as wel. It never does quite stick for either of them. 

Her two longest-standing relationships are with her in the car: her sister and an angel. Sam sighs, slumps a bit further down in her seat, and finds herself thinking about Jess. When she looks at Cas in the rearview mirror she sees that she’s looking out the window, pensive and quiet. 

The radio is on, playing a song that Dean probably doesn’t like because Sam likes it, but she’s made no move to change it yet. It’s on low, a soft noise that threads through the rumble of the car as they go. 

Cas moves, just a little tick to the side, and Sam frowns until she realizes that she’s running her hand over the seat, fingers dancing across the leather, following one seam in particular. Sam turns to look at her, and when Cas meets her eyes she’s as unreadable as ever. 

It takes a couple of minutes, but it clicks. Cas has her hand pressed directly over where the girls’ initials are carved into the bench under the seats. 

“Chuck once wrote that this was the most important car in the universe,” Cas says, her voice low, and Dean sits up a bit straighter, paying attention. 

“I don’t know about that,” Sam says, and Cas levels her with a look that gets her to shut up.

“It’s kept watch over you two for years and years,” Cas says. “That makes it important.” 

When they stop that night, Dean comes around to the back and leans over Cas, feeling around until she can pull the seat next to her up. She leans back, hands her butterfly knife to Cas. 

“I don’t think --” Cas starts. 

“It’s looked after you, too,” Sam says, and Cas takes a deep breath and flips the knife open.


End file.
